The management of Information Technology (IT) operations has become increasingly difficult due to the lack of an automated and integrated approach to technology resource management. Many customers are now demanding from their outsourcing partners technology resource management solutions that tie demand, service level agreements, assets, projects, labor, knowledge, automations and provisioning for corporate IT into one automated and integrated system. An important component of technology resource management is the ability to delegate at least some management tasks to the customer.
When a customer submits a resource management request, a resource provider employee assigned to that customer will typically carry out the request manually for each environment owned by the customer. For example, a customer may request a password change for one or more users spanning one or more environments. Such tasks, however, can require administrating password changes manually across multiple environments running one or more versions of applications in various hardware and software configurations. When the number of administrative tasks is multiplied by a large number of customers and end users, it becomes apparent that a simple administrative task can consume significant human capital. Moreover, as a resource provider's customer base grows, the amount of knowledge its employees need to service those customers grows. The acquisition and updating of such knowledge may require significant investments in training, which can be difficult to recapture from the customer.
Therefore, what is needed is an integrated and automated solution for delegating resource management tasks to customers without the intervention of resource provider personnel, thereby providing the customer with greater control over its operations. Such a solution should enable the resource provider to realize cost savings by reducing the number of personnel and training needed to service customer requests.